Labour List should go – not Ken Livingstone

The current editor of Labour List, Peter Edwards, uses the headline ’Livingstone must go’. Despite his sterling achievements Ken Livingstone is accused by Edwards of presenting a “bizarre theory – that Hitler supported Zionism . . . The man is a pariah”

The historical accounts – for example, one from America’s Jewish Virtual Library, explain that following talks between German officials and the Palestine center of the World Zionist Organisation the Haavara Agreement was concluded in August 1933.

The signatories were the Reich Ministry of Economics, the Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland (Zionist Federation of Germany) and the Anglo-Palestine Bank (then under the directive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine).

Under the agreement Jewish emigrants had to hand over their possessions before they left Germany, and the proceeds were deposited in a special account in Germany. The money was used to purchase German-made agricultural tools, building materials, pumps, fertilizer, and so forth, which were exported to Palestine and sold there by the Jewish-owned Haavara company in Tel-Aviv. Money from the sales was given to the Jewish emigrant upon his arrival in Palestine in an amount corresponding to his deposit in Germany.

For the Zionist Federation it was a way to save Jews from the claws of an increasingly hostile regime and attract them to Palestine, while for the Nazi state signing an international agreement was further proof of its legitimacy, broke the Jewish movement of boycotting German goods, and helped the recovery of German exports.

As a result, the Hitler government vigorously supported the Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until 1940-41, when the Second World War prevented extensive collaboration.

So was not Ken Livingstone referring to verified historical facts? As a regular recipient of the List’s deplorable bulletin I see it as a vehicle supporting the New Labour faction and undermining the leader and his ministers.

The Jewish Virtual Library is a project of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) was established in 1993 as a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship by emphasizing the fundamentals of the alliance — ‘the values our nations share’.

The hysterical witch-hunting of Ken is disgraceful beyond words. Here is what I wrote on our Local Momentum Facebook page:

” It is well known that Hitler supported the aims of Zionism. , namely, he allowed German Jews to be sent to Palestine (66,000) in exchange for the purchase of German goods. All this was agreed with German Zionists and opposed by many Jews in US and elsewhere because it undermined their attempt to get an international boycott of Germany. Such a boycott could even have brought down the Hitler regime. All this is well known. Ken said that many Jews approached him and thanked him for telling the truth. Ken has been a life-long fighter against all forms of racism and a strong supporter of the anti-Nazi league.”

Unfortunately he has not been robustly supported by the Labour leadership